Obama's Three Degrees of Separation

By

Dan Kennedy

June 2, 2010 - 3:04pm

His fans are fond of saying how cool and “above the fray” President Obama always seems. His critics might call it arrogance or aloofness. Either way, it’s unsurprising, given his mastery at separating himself from unpleasant episodes, issues and characters.

Three distinct instances should suffice to prove that Obama is not above the slime of his Chicago political background. He’s just good at distancing himself from it.

From the Slime of the Sestak Bribery – It looks like Rahm Emanuel approached former President Clinton and his attorney to approach Sestak.

Fitting that Clinton was the buffer; he who questioned the meaning of “is.” But, gee, if this was so clean, why didn’t the president just invite Congressman Sestak to a beer summit at the White House and handle the matter himself, with all his personal charisma and charm?

We might wonder what bribe has now been offered Sestak to shut up and play along with this concocted, tortured evasion of truth? And we might even be more open-minded to Illinois ex-Governor Bloga’s insistence that Emanuel and Obama are neck-deep in his bribery and Senate seat-selling scandal.

Imagine if President Bush were caught sending bullies and bag-men with bribes to keep a sitting Congressman out of a primary contest against the president’s desperately needed 60th vote provider in the Senate.

From the Slime of the Oil Spill – There’s the Army Corps of Engineers telling Gov. Jindal he can’t act to protect his state’s coast. The Engineers blame it on the EPA. The president could slice the red tape with stroke of pen and liberate the governor to act. But he’s trying to have it both ways, proclaiming he has been fully engaged and in charge since the beginning, but pointing blame at BP, TransOcean, and all advocates of offshore drilling while his bureaucracies dither.

Imagine if this were Bush responding to this mess after 35 or 41 days, leaving the oil company who created the accident alone and in charge of remedying it – with no hurriedly organized task force of experts from other firms, Corps of Engineers, NASA scientists, T. Boone Pickens, etc., Imagine Bush refusing the Louisiana’s governor’s request to create barriers to the spill reaching shore? Liberal/environmental activists would be burning Bush figures in effigy and hoisting them with nooses, trailing Bush to his own ranch and marching in protest at its gates.

Imagine if Bush’s EPA chief had continued his vacation as planned while this disaster was worsening. (The media screamed over his FEMA director finishing his dinner.) If Bush’s regulators had been too busy watching porn on their office computers to police these off-shore operations.

To their credit, some liberal pundits – Carville, even Matthews – have ever so slowly and reluctantly come to criticize President Obama’s inaction and his “not my fault – not my job” routine. But most are still giving him a pass.

From the Slime of His Own Past – We know he had intimate and long-standing relationships with Rev. Wright, an apologist for terrorists, and Bill Ayres, a domestic terrorist. We know the purchase of his deeply discounted Chicago mansion was arranged by political fixer and now convicted felon Tony Rezko. (That episode is reminiscent of Hillary’s amazing windfall profits in cattle futures.) We know his career has intertwined with Acorn until the ultimate separation: the nomination of his party, and his election to the presidency. Now we’re seeing all the lying and stonewalling a more-Nixonian-than-Nixon gang of White House thugs can provide.

Obama has mastered the three degrees of separation game. Adept at placing straw men, bag men, middle men and fall guys between himself and accountability, with most of the mainstream media complicit.

Many people will pay a price on his behalf before this is over, as some already have. Those in his service would do well to consider this inevitability. Obama is a narcissistic, self-obsessed user, ready and willing to cynically manipulate anyone and throw anyone under the bus. All that matters to him is amassing of power, avoiding of accountability or scrutiny, and skirting if not violating – as well as de-constructing – the law.

Perhaps all this is ideologically driven, and thus well-intended, however misguided. Unfortunately, ideology leads to the ends-justify-the-means rationalizations by which almost all great crimes are committed against societies.

Dan Kennedy is a serial entrepreneur, adviser to business owners, sought-after speaker and author of 14 books. His latest, “Make ‘Em Laugh & Take Their Money: A Few Thoughts on Using Humor as a Speaker or Writer or Sales Professional for Purposes of Persuasion[1],” contains a lelection of his BMI essays. More information about Dan can be found at www.NoBSBooks.com[2], and a free collection of his business resources including newsletters and webinars at www.DanKennedy.com[3].<?xml:namespace prefix = u2 />

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